There’s something uniquely amorphous about the horror genre. That is, like comedy, the spirit of what makes it special can be captured regardless of your budget, and regardless of the time allotted. Say it’s late at night, and you want some quick entertainment before bed – put on a horror short film, and you’ll experience the full gamut of emotions that the genre can bring. You can’t do the same for a drama, you need more time. Action, possibly, but there’s still a budgetary threshold. When Barbarian begins, on a rainy night in a suspect Detroit neighborhood, its premise reminds you of a horror short film. Seemingly small cast, pitch black outside, singular location, etc. Immediately you’re buckled up for an event that feels quaint, but the tension on screen is palpable. The only question you have is if you can guess what comes next.
Barbarian is a movie that’s hard to talk about because you really shouldn’t talk about it. What I can say is that it begins the way a lot of these movies do: on a dark stormy night. A young woman named Tess (Georgina Campbell) is in town for a job interview, and she books an Airbnb for the night prior. Why the employer doesn’t just conduct a video interview, instead of making this poor woman go on a road trip, we do not know. Why you would plan what seems like a multiple days-long stay in a city just for a job interview, when you can just get in and out, we also do not know, but it also doesn’t matter. That’s because when Tess arrives at her rental, she finds it has been double-booked and is already occupied by Keith (Bill Skarsgård), a neurotic but ambitious young man that is more than meets the eye. Against her better judgment, and after ironing out any misunderstandings, Tess agrees to stay at the rental.
Thus begins something of an odyssey that can’t be described here, but should be seen first-hand. The film is a labyrinth of ideas and themes, chief of which is the juxtaposition between money and poverty, as well as maternity and brutality. Tess arrives in Detroit because she has ambitions of upward economic mobility. However, the treacherous nature of the unsettling and impoverished neighborhood she chooses to stay at begins to claw at her heels. She arrives in this movie fresh-faced and well dressed, but it won’t be long before she (and her clothes) is caked in dirt, grime, and who the hell knows what else. Along the way, she’s confronted with a grotesque mutilation of motherhood and femininity. It flirts with the conception of a tragedy – young, educated woman shows up in an unfamiliar place with bold aspirations, but her fate is threatened by the dark underbelly that all of her aspirations represent.
Meanwhile, Keith is a bit of a cipher whose character construction feels, at times, a little bit separated from the movie’s goals. Director Zach Creggar knows immediately that viewers will be suspicious of Keith, and for good reason. But what he represents in the calculus of the story’s equation calls into question whether this is really a fully fleshed-out character that helps to embody the film’s themes, or if Creggar is merely using him as a device to get the plot from one point to another. Keith is a multi-faceted individual with eclectic interests, and his personality begins to surprise Tessa. But, when it’s finally time for the movie to play at least some of its hand, the character displays baffling behavior choices, which do more to move the movie forward while trading-in the character development that we’ve seen built up till this point. Essentially, one might not want to buy into everything this person says.
The house in question, cleverly placed on ‘Barbary Lane’, is a character in its own right. The design of the interior doesn’t stand out, it resembles just about every modern small home you’ve seen, which is why it’s so creepy. There’s a sense that either something could go wrong, or something has gone wrong. Some places scream with an idea of “If these walls could talk…” for both good and bad reasons. However, this house says nothing. If bad things have happened, or will happen, the house is mum. It has been scared silent.
Creggar, along with cinematographer Zach Kuperstein, shoots the home with curiosity and trepidation. The camera moves slowly as we reveal more of what’s inside this dwelling. Creggar also slyly leaves just enough unoccupied space in certain shots to have experienced horror fans wonder if something, or someone, is going to appear out of nowhere. Even if nothing ever comes out of those spaces, it’s still anxiety-inducing because you can’t ever let your guard down. The camera conventions are a bit reminiscent of Don’t Breathe (2016), another horror film set in Detroit. Although Barbarian doesn’t quite reached the heights of that film’s visual athleticism, it is just as unnerving and even more claustrophobic.
By the time you reach the end, Barbarian will have paid off some of your expectations, but will take you to unforseen detours along the way. It is like a road trip movie, where you get to the intended destination, but you had no idea you’d see these 5 others sights along the way. Which makes it a fascinating screenplay and experience. However, the end of the movie does tend to overstay it’s welcome a bit with several elaborate set pieces, long after we’ve figured out what’s going on. There’s also a couple of cartoonish feats of physics, one involving a preposterous slide when a character is thrown on the ground, and later by an even more ludicrous rescue dive that defies all laws of gravity. Either these absurdities are tongue-in-cheek inside jokes, or the filmmakers really hoped we wouldn’t notice. Yes, it makes sense thematically in terms of hysterical strength, motherhood, and all that jazz, but it still takes you out of the movie.
Nonetheless, Barbarian arrests because it is strongly crafted pulp mixed with modern themes on sex and violence, one that vacillates between several different tones and moods. You need a game cast to accentuate those shifts, and the film bolsters that including a couple of standouts that it’ll be best to leave for the movie itself to reveal. But Campbell and Skarsgård embody these entities and turn them into believable people. Through them, and some others, we bare witness to a story about the deception of man, treachery vs consent, greed, and how brutality can even infect the innocent. But it all starts with a woman, in the pouring rain, just trying to access the rental she believes is hers. It’s a simple start, and that’s the beauty of the horror premise. And we get swept up in it, whether the runtime is 100 minutes or 15. For we’re waiting to see exactly when the simplistic will branch out into the chaotic.
Barbarian was awesome! Definitely the most fun I had at the movies since ‘X’.
Also without giving anything away, but nonetheless deserving of honorable mention is Justin Long’s character. No stranger to the horror genre, Long is memorable for such roles as ‘ Jeepers Creepers’, ‘Drag Me to Hell’ and was it ‘Walrus’ or ‘ Tusk’?
At any rate, the introduction of his character at first feels like such a sudden left turn after the original film set up that the author of this review had previously mentioned. However, the horror aspect of Justin’s character soon becomes apparent and, no doubt, will resonate with the fears of many single men of this day and age.
Long’s involvement comes full circle and we are finally made aware of his relevance to the overall plot, as well as a recurring theme on men in general.
I highly recommend ‘Barbarian ‘ as part of your October celebration.